New York, NY, May 10, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called on Donald Trump to renounce the support of William Johnson, one of the country’s most well-known white supremacists, who recently applied to and was accepted by the Trump campaign as a state delegate to the Republican presidential primary in California.
Johnson’s name was reportedly included on a list of 169 delegates the Trump campaign forwarded to the California secretary of state.
“The American Freedom Party is a hate group that ADL has been tracking for years,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “We call on Donald Trump to renounce the support of the American Freedom Party and to remove its leader, William Johnson, from the Trump delegate slate in California.”
Johnson is the head of the white supremacist American Freedom Party and has previously financed robocalls and radio time in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy. While he projects a suit-and-tie image as a lawyer and activist, Johnson has long courted hardcore members of the white supremacist movement and spoke last year at a white supremacist event in Bakersfield, Calif. that included racist skinheads.
For years, Johnson has promoted the idea of a white ethno-state in America. In the 1980s, under the pseudonym “James O. Pace,” he promoted a scheme that would have eliminated the Fourteenth Amendment and limited American citizenship to whites only.
As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, ADL takes no position on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for office.